A call director is an interactive voice response (IVR) system which allows a caller to self-direct their call to a particular extension or department without the intervention of a live operator. The call director and IVR are typically attached to a private branch exchange (PBX). A call is answered at the remote location by the PBX and it is then routed to the IVR. The IVR prompts the caller to select from a menu of choices to direct the call. Typically, if the caller knows the party's direct extension, the caller can enter it to be immediately connected to the party. Otherwise, the caller must follow the menu choices or select a directory of employees in order to be properly connected.
Call director systems are typically used in a small business or single location situation. However, in certain cases, especially when dealing with retail operations or large companies having many employees or a large number of departments or products, the reasonableness of providing a simple menu-based or direct extension dialing scenario is diminished. In these situations, the large number of possible parties or extensions that may be called will cause the call director application to become too complex.
One solution to this problem would be to provide a large vocabulary voice recognition-based call director. This type of call director allows a caller to speak the department or the product name in which they are interested and, if the call director recognizes the caller's utterance, the call director connects the caller to the appropriate party based upon the spoken information. The problem with this type of system is that voice recognition technology and the software required to run a large vocabulary voice recognition system is very expensive. As a result, if a voice recognition system is deployed at every one of the regional centers or remote offices, the system could become prohibitively expensive to operate and maintain.
In addition to the high cost, there are maintenance problems associated with these systems. In a large company with many remote locations, such as individual retail outlets, there would not be technical personnel at each location that are trained to operate and maintain complex telecommunications systems, such as a large vocabulary voice recognition call director, therefore, it would be difficult to keep such a system operating at each location.
Another solution is to provide a live operator that can interact with callers and direct calls. However, this solution is also prohibitive because the cost of having a live operator at every location is significant.
An ideal situation would allow calls to be handed off from individual remote locations to a centralized call center that would direct each call. This arrangement has problems because, although there is a centralized call center directing the calls, the incoming calls still go into the remote locations. The remote locations would try to direct the call automatically and, if they could not direct the call, then the caller would be transferred through the telephone network to a centralized call center. The central operator would have to interact with the caller and then direct the PBX as to where to connect the call. This solution presents an increased cost for the live operators in the central location and there would be increased telephone line costs associated with bringing those calls to the regional or central call center.